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Obama’s birth certificate, obtained from the Hawaii Department of Health. [Source: FightTheSmears (.com)]Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), running for the Democratic nomination for president, releases a digitally scanned copy of his Hawaiian birth certificate. His campaign is responding to persistent rumors that he is not a legitimate American citizen. In the process of releasing the certificate, Obama’s campaign also launches a Web site called Fight The Smears, devoted to debunking the allegations that, among other things, Obama is not a citizen, he is a closet Muslim, he took his oaths for political office on a copy of the Koran, he refuses to say the Pledge of Allegiance, and other falsehoods. As Obama was born in Kapiolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu at 7:24 p.m. on August 4, 1961, his birth certificate comes under Hawaiian state law, and those laws state birth certificates are not public records. Only the individuals, or immediate family members, may request copies. The copy of the birth certificate released by the Obama campaign confirms that his name is legitimately “Barack Hussein Obama,” not “Barack Muhammed Obama,” “Barry Soetoro,” or other claimed variants, and states that Obama’s mother is Stanley Ann Dunham, an American, and his father is Barack Hussein Obama, an “African.” The birth certificate release only inflames the “birther” claims that Obama is hiding his true citizenship, religion, political alliances, and other such personal facts (see June 27, 2008). [St. Petersburg Times, 6/27/2008; St. Petersburg Times, 7/1/2009; Honolulu Advertiser, 7/28/2009]

Logo for the Hawaii Department of Health. [Source: Baby Guard Fence (.com)]PolitiFact, the nonpartisan, political fact-checking organization sponsored by the St. Petersburg Times, publishes a scathing denunciation of so-called “birther” claims that presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) is not a legitimate American citizen. The story has gained traction mostly through Internet blogs and emails circulating among far-right and “tea party” organizations and figures, making wildly varying claims—Obama is a Kenyan, he is a Muslim, his middle name is Mohammed, his birth name is “Barry Soetoro,” and so forth. PolitiFact’s Amy Hollyfield writes: “At full throttle, the accusations are explosive and unrelenting, the writers emboldened by the anonymity and reach of the Internet. And you can’t help but ask: How do you prove something to people who come to the facts believing, out of fear or hatred or maybe just partisanship, that they’re being tricked?” Hollyfield notes that PolitiFact has sought a valid copy of Obama’s birth certificate since the claims began circulating months ago. PolitiFact has already secured a copy of Obama’s 1992 marriage certificate from the Cook County, Illinois, Bureau of Vital Statistics, his driver’s license record from the Illinois secretary of state’s office, his registration and disciplinary record with the Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois, and all of his property records. The records are consistent, all naming him as either “Barack H. Obama” or “Barack Hussein Obama,” his legitimate, given name. PolitiFact ran into trouble with the birth certificate. Obama was born in a hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii, and according to Hawaiian law, that state’s birth certificates are not public record. Only family members can request copies. The Obama presidential campaign originally declined to provide PolitiFact with a copy, until the campaign released a true copy of the certificate (see June 13, 2008). When PolitiFact received the document, researchers emailed it to the Hawaii Department of Health, which maintains such records, to ask if it was real. Spokesman Janice Okubo responded, “It’s a valid Hawaii state birth certificate.” Instead of settling the controversy, the certificate inflamed the so-called “birthers,” who asked a number of questions concerning the certificate, including queries about and challenges to: the certificate’s seal and registrar’s signature; the color of the document as compared to other Hawaiian birth certificates; the date stamp of June 2007, which some say is “bleeding through the back of the document,” supposedly calling into question the validity of the stamp and, thusly, the entire certificate; the lack of creases from being folded and mailed; the authenticity of the document, which some claim is “clearly Photoshopped and a wholesale fraud.” Further investigation by PolitiFact researchers supports the validity of the certificate and disproves the allegations as cited. Hollyfield writes: “And soon enough, after going to every length possible to confirm the birth certificate’s authenticity, you start asking, what is reasonable here? Because if this document is forged, then they all are. If this document is forged, a US senator and his presidential campaign have perpetrated a vast, long-term fraud. They have done it with conspiring officials at the Hawaii Department of Health, the Cook County (Ill.) Bureau of Vital Statistics, the Illinois secretary of state’s office, the Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois, and many other government agencies.” Hollyfield notes that the Hawaii Department of Health receives about a dozen email inquiries a day about Obama’s birth certificate, according to Okubo. She tells Hollyfield: “I guess the big issue that’s being raised is the lack of an embossed seal and a signature.” On a Hawaiian birth certificate, she says, the seal and signatures are on the back of the document. “Because they scanned the front… you wouldn’t see those things.” Hollyfield concludes that it is conceivable “that Obama conspired his way to the precipice of the world’s biggest job, involving a vast network of people and government agencies over decades of lies. Anything’s possible.” But she goes on to ask doubters “to look at the overwhelming evidence to the contrary and your sense of what’s reasonable has to take over. There is not one shred of evidence to disprove PolitiFact’s conclusion that the candidate’s name is Barack Hussein Obama, or to support allegations that the birth certificate he released isn’t authentic. And that’s true no matter how many people cling to some hint of doubt and use the Internet to fuel their innate sense of distrust.” [St. Petersburg Times, 6/27/2008]

A birth announcement from the August 13, 1961 Honululu Advertiser announcing the birth of a baby boy to the parents of Barack Obama. [Source: FactCheck (.org)]A blogger who supports Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) for president over Democratic primary challenger Barack Obama (D-IL) finds a birth announcement from a copy of the August 13, 1961 Honolulu Advertiser announcing Obama’s birth. The blogger publishes a scanned graphic of the announcement on his blog, and concludes that Obama was “likely” born on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu as the campaign, and the senator, have always claimed (see June 13, 2008). Reprinting the annoucement, FactCheck (.org) notes: “Of course, it’s distantly possible that Obama’s grandparents may have planted the announcement just in case their grandson needed to prove his US citizenship in order to run for president someday. We suggest that those who choose to go down that path should first equip themselves with a high-quality tinfoil hat. The evidence is clear: Barack Obama was born in the USA.” [FactCheck (.org), 8/21/2008] Reporter Will Hoover for the Honolulu Advertiser notes that both the Advertiser and the Honolulu Star Bulletin published birth announcements for Obama. One of the announcements, the blogger notes, contains the actual address of Obama’s parents at the time they lived in Honolulu, 6085 Kalanianaole Highway. Newspaper officials tell Hoover that the announcements came, not from the parents, but from Hawaii’s Department of Health. “That’s not the kind of stuff a family member calls in and says, ‘Hey, can you put this in?’” Hoover explains. [What Really Happened (.com), 2008; St. Petersburg Times, 7/1/2009]

A photograph of the actual Hawaiian birth certificate of Barack Obama, being held by FactCheck (.org) writer Joe Miller. [Source: FactCheck (.org)]FactCheck (.org), a non-partisan arm of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, certifies that its experts have verified that the birth certificate released by Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) is valid (see June 13, 2008). Since the release of the digitally scanned image, a firestorm of controversy (see July 20, 2008) has erupted over the authenticity of the certificate, even after Hawaiian officials verified its validity (see June 27, 2008) and the discovery of a printed birth announcement from a Honolulu newspaper (see July 2008). FactCheck notes that much of the controversy has been sparked by author Jerome Corsi, whose recent book Obamanation makes a host of negative claims against Obama (see August 1, 2008 and After), and who has told a Fox News interviewer that the birth certificate the campaign has is “fake” (see August 15, 2008). FactCheck releases the following statement: “We beg to differ. FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined, and photographed the original birth certificate. We conclude that it meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving US citizenship. Claims that the document lacks a raised seal or a signature are false. We have posted high-resolution photographs of the document as ‘supporting documents’ to this article. Our conclusion: Obama was born in the USA just as he has always said.” The actual certificate is in the hands of Obama campaign officials in Chicago, FactCheck reports, and has the proper seals and signature from Hawaiian registrar Alvin Onaka. Certificate Meets Requirements for State Department Passport Issuance - FactCheck reports: “The certificate has all the elements the State Department requires for proving citizenship to obtain a US passport: ‘your full name, the full name of your parent(s), date and place of birth, sex, date the birth record was filed, and the seal or other certification of the official custodian of such records.’ The names, date and place of birth, and filing date are all evident on the scanned version, and you can see the seal above” in a photograph reproduced on FactCheck’s Web site. 'Short Form' Certificate - The copy possessed by the Obama campaign is called a “short form birth certificate.” The so-called “long form” is created by the hospital in which a child is born, and includes additional information such as birth weight and parents’ hometowns. The short form is what is provided by Hawaiian officials upon receiving a valid request for a birth certificate: It “is printed by the state and draws from a database with fewer details. The Hawaii Department of Health’s birth record request form does not give the option to request a photocopy of your long-form birth certificate, but their short form has enough information to be acceptable to the State Department.” Scan Artifacts - The digitally scanned version released by the Obama campaign does indeed show “halos” around the black-text lettering, prompting some to claim that the text may have been copied onto an image of security paper. However, FactCheck writes, “the document itself has no such halos, nor do the close-up photos we took of it. We conclude that the halo seen in the image produced by the campaign is a digital artifact from the scanning process.” Date Stamp, Blacked-Out Certificate Number - The digital scan also contains an unusual date stamp and a blacked-out certificate number. Campaign spokesperson Shauna Daly explains that the certificate is stamped July 2007 because that is when Hawaiian officials produced it for the presidential campaign. The campaign did not release a copy until mid-2008, leading some to speculate that the date stamp proved the digital scan was a forgery. Of the certificate number, Daly says that the campaign “couldn’t get someone on the phone in Hawaii to tell us whether the number represented some secret information, and we erred on the side of blacking it out. Since then we’ve found out it’s pretty irrelevant for the outside world.” FactCheck writes, “The document we looked at did have a certificate number; it is 151 1961 - 010641.” 'African' Father - Obama’s father, Barack Obama Sr., is listed on the certificate as “African,” sparking claims that Obama is actually of Kenyan citizenship. Kurt Tsue of the Hawaii Department of Health tells FactCheck that the father and mother’s race are told to officials by the parents, and thusly “we accept what the parents self identify themselves to be.” FactCheck writes: “We consider it reasonable to believe that Barack Obama Sr. would have thought of and reported himself as ‘African.’ It’s certainly not the slam dunk some readers have made it out to be.” Differences in Borders - The “security borders” on the digital scan do indeed look slightly different from other examples of Hawaii birth certificates. Tsue explains: “The borders are generated each time a certified copy is printed. A citation located on the bottom left hand corner of the certificate indicates which date the form was revised.” He also confirms that the information in the short form birth certificate is sufficient to prove citizenship for “all reasonable purposes.” [FactCheck (.org), 8/21/2008]

Hawaii’s Director of Health Dr. Chiyome Fukino says she and the registrar of vital statistics, Alvin Onaka, have personally verified that the Hawaii Department of Health holds Senator Barack Obama (D-IL)‘s original birth certificate (see June 13, 2008, June 27, 2008, July 2008, and August 21, 2008). Fukino says that she has “personally seen and verified that the Department of Health has Senator Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures.” Fukino and Onaka thereby verify that Obama is, indeed, an American citizen. Fukino releases the statement in an attempt to stem the tide of conspiracy theories that assert Obama is not a US citizen—“birtherism”—and therefore cannot be eligible to be president. Fukino adds that no state official, including Governor Linda Lingle (R-HI), ever issued instructions that Obama’s certificate be handled differently. Hawaii state law prohibits the release of the so-called “long form” birth certificate to anyone who does not have a tangible interest; state law says that the “short form” the state releases to its citizens, and that Obama has long ago made public (see June 13, 2008), is legal and valid in and of itself. State courts in Ohio, Pennsylvania (see August 21-24, 2008), and Washington State have recently dismissed court challenges to Obama’s citizenship. [FactCheck (.org), 8/21/2008; Associated Press, 10/31/2008] Fukino tells a Honolulu reporter: “This has gotten ridiculous (see July 20, 2008). There are plenty of other, important things to focus on, like the economy, taxes, energy.” Asked if this “[w]ill be enough to quiet the doubters,” Fukino responds: “I hope so. We need to get some work done.” [FactCheck (.org), 8/21/2008]

The non-partisan PolitiFact, an organization sponsored by the St. Petersburg Times, again delves into the ever-widening controversy surrounding President Obama’s supposed lack of US citizenship. A year ago, the organization attempted to debunk the wildly varying claims that Obama is not a US citizen (see June 27, 2008). Since then, the number and nature of the various claims against Obama’s heritage and citizenship have continued to swell. PolitiFact examines one aspect of the controversy, the question about “long form” vs. “short form” birth certificates. According to PolitiFact researcher Robert Fairley, so-called “birthers” claim that Obama has never produced a valid “long form” birth certificate, only an easily faked “short form” certificate that is generated via a computer database in Honolulu, the city of Obama’s birth. In August 2008, researchers from FactCheck stated that they had verified the authenticity of a physical and true copy of the birth certificate, though the verification did little to stem the tide of claims and conspiracy theories. The “long form”—kept in state vaults by Hawaiian law—is the actual “birth certificate,” birthers claim; the “short form” is merely a “certification of live birth,” and, they say, useless for proving anyone’s actual status as a citizen. Many “birthers” believe that the “hidden” long form would prove Obama’s foreign birth, and claim that Hawaii’s refusal to release it (a violation of state law) is proof of Obama’s hidden heritage. Some claim that Hawaii does not accept a “certification of live birth” as proof that an individual was physically born in Hawaii, and point to a statement on the Web site of the Hawaii Department of Home Lands, which reads in part: “In order to process your application, DHHL utilizes information that is found only on the original certificate of live birth, which is either black or green. This is a more complete record of your birth than the certification of live birth (a computer-generated printout). Submitting the original certificate of live birth will save you time and money since the computer-generated certification requires additional verification by DHHL.” DHHL spokesman Lloyd Yonenaka says the statement is somewhat misleading. In order to be eligible for Hawaii’s Home Lands program, an applicant must be able to prove that his ancestry is 50 percent native Hawaiian or indigeneous. Obama has never asserted that his ancestry is native Hawaiian. The DHHL Web site now states: “The Department of Hawaiian Home Lands accepts both certificates of live birth (original birth certificate) and certifications of live birth because they are official government records documenting an individual’s birth. The certificate of live birth generally has more information which is useful for genealogical purposes as compared to the certification of live birth which is a computer-generated printout that provides specific details of a person’s birth. Although original birth certificates (certificates of live birth) are preferred for their greater detail, the State Department of Health (DOH) no longer issues certificates of live birth. When a request is made for a copy of a birth certificate, the DOH issues a certification of live birth.” Janice Okubo of the Hawaii Department of Health says there is no real difference between the “long form” and “short form” for any useful purposes. The terms are “just words,” she says. Obama’s birth certificate as posted on the Internet (see June 13, 2008) “is considered a birth certificate from the state of Hawaii. There’s only one form of birth certificate.” Hawaii has followed the same practice of keeping the “long form” on file and issuing copies of the “short form” since the 1960s, she says. The forms have changed somewhat in appearance over the ensuring decades, she notes, and says there are no doubt differences between certificates issued in, say 1961 and those issued now. “When you request a birth certificate, the one you get looks exactly like the one posted on his site,” she says. “That’s the birth certificate.” The so-called “short form” “certification of live birth” would show if Obama had been born in a foreign land, she says. The certificate states that he was born in Honolulu. [St. Petersburg Times, 7/1/2009]

Hawaii’s health director, Dr. Chiyome Fukino, releases a second statement that verifies President Obama was indeed born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961, and therefore is a valid US citizen. Fukino is responding to persistent rumors that Obama is not a valid US citizen and therefore is ineligible to serve as president. The statement reads: “I, Dr. Chiyome Fukino, director of the Hawaii State Department of Health, have seen the original vital records maintained on file by the Hawaii State Department of Health verifying Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American citizen. I have nothing further to add to this statement or my original statement issued in October 2008 over eight months ago.” Fukino released a similar statement before the 2008 presidential election (see October 30, 2008), which was derided by “birthers” who are convinced Obama is not a true American citizen. CNN’s Lou Dobbs has demanded to see Obama’s “long form” birth certificate, even though Hawaiian law states that all such documents remain under lock and key and are not publicly released; Dobbs continues to push the “birther” story on his nightly talk show, even though CNN’s US president Jon Klein has told Dobbs’s staffers that the issue is a “dead” story. Birthers dispute the fact that Obama was born in Kapiolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu on August 4, 1961, despite the release of a verified copy of the certificate (see June 13, 2008, June 27, 2008, and August 21, 2008), court rulings, and statements by Fukino and Hawaiian Governor Linda Lingle (R-HI). [Honolulu Advertiser, 7/28/2009]

Donald Trump, addressing an audience at the 2011 Conservative Political Action Conference. [Source: Red Dog Report (.com)]Billionaire entrepeneur and television host Donald Trump tells an audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference that President Obama “came out of nowhere,” and adds: “In fact, I’ll go a step further: the people that went to school with him, they never saw him, they don’t know who he is. It’s crazy.” Trump, who receives cheers for the statement, tells the assemblage that he is considering running for president in 2012 as a Republican. He is apparently trying to revive the so-called “birther” claims that Obama is not a valid American citizen (see (see July 20, 2008, August 15, 2008, October 8-10, 2008, October 16, 2008 and After, November 10, 2008, December 3, 2008, August 1-4, 2009, May 7, 2010, Shortly Before June 28, 2010, and Around June 28, 2010). In response, PolitiFact, a non-partisan political research organization sponsored by the St. Petersburg Times, retraces Obama’s academic career: Obama attended kindergarten in Honululu, and moved with his family to Jakarta, Indonesia, in 1967, where he attended a Catholic elementary school, St. Francis Assisi Catholic, as well as Besuki Public School, until age 11. He then returned to Honolulu, where he lived with his maternal grandparents and attended a private college preparatory school, Punahou School, until he graduated with a high school diploma. In 1979, he attended Occidental College in Los Angeles, transferred to Columbia University in 1981, and graduated from that university in 1983. He later attended, and graduated from, Harvard Law School in 1991. Trump’s claims apparently center on rumors that “no one knew him” at Columbia University, fueled in part by a 2008 editorial by the Wall Street Journal (see September 11, 2008), which repeated the “finding” of a Fox News “investigation” that found 400 classmates of Obama’s had not known him at the time. Another source is Libertarian vice-presidential candidate Wayne Allyn Root, who attended Columbia at the same time as Obama and says: “I think the most dangerous thing you should know about Barack Obama is that I don’t know a single person at Columbia that knows him, and they all know me. I don’t have a classmate who ever knew Barack Obama at Columbia” (see September 5, 2008). Obama has himself said he did little socializing at Columbia, and though he had some involvement with the Black Students Organization and participated in anti-apartheid activities, spent most of his time studying: “Mostly, my years at Columbia were an intense period of study,” he has said. “When I transferred, I decided to buckle down and get serious. I spent a lot of time in the library. I didn’t socialize that much. I was like a monk.” The Journal noted a May 2008 story from the Associated Press containing an interview with Obama’s former roommate, Sohale Siddiqi, who verified Obama’s claims, and in January 2009, the New York Times published an interview with another roommate from the time, Phil Boerner, who also validated Obama’s claims of being a bookish, rather solitary student. PolitiFact interviews Cathie Currie, a professor at Adelphi University, who remembers Obama occasionally playing pick-up soccer with her and a group of friends on the lawn outside the library. She says he made an impression because of his athleticism, his maturity, and his wisdom, and she assumed that he was several years older than he actually was. “My sense of it was that he was keeping a low profile,” Currie tells the PolitiFact interviewer. “We’d ask him to go out with us for beers after soccer. He seemed like he wanted to, but then he’d step back and say, ‘Sorry, I’m going to the library.’” PolitiFact lists an array of articles covering Obama’s time at Occidental and Harvard Law School, noting that “[d]ozens of former classmates and teachers from those schools have publicly shared their recollections (and photos) of Obama. Obama was the president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review journal, for goodness sake.” PolitiFact has also found “plenty” of people who remember Obama from elementary and high school, in Indonesia and Hawaii. PolitiFact concludes: “We could get deeper into this but it seems like overkill. It’s abundantly clear that there are lots and lots of former classmates who remember Obama at every level of school. It’s true that Obama’s two years at Columbia are relatively undocumented. And far fewer classmates have publicly shared recollections of Obama from that period, as opposed to other school years before and after. At Columbia, Obama was a transfer student, he lived off campus, and by his and other accounts he buried himself in his studies and didn’t socialize much. But even so, there are several students who recall Obama at Columbia. In short, media accounts and biographies are filled with on-the-record, named classmates who remember Obama. Trump is certainly right that presidential candidates are heavily scrutinized. As even a basic online search confirms, Obama’s school years were, too. Trump’s claim that people who went to school with Obama ‘never saw him, they don’t know who he is’ is ridiculous. Or, to borrow Trump’s phrase, it’s crazy.” [St. Petersburg Times, 2/10/2011; JamesJoe, 2/17/2011]

Billionaire entrepeneur and television host Donald Trump, who has begun publicly questioning President Obama’s US citizenship (see February 10, 2011), explores the “controversy” on ABC’s morning talk show Good Morning America. In an interview conducted on his private plane, “Trump Force One,” Trump implies that Obama is lying about being born in Hawaii (see October 1, 2007, April 18, 2008, Before October 27, 2008, August 4, 2010, and February 28, 2011), says he is a “little” skeptical of Obama’s citizenship, and says the “birthers” who express their doubts about Obama should not be dismissed as “idiots” (see February 17, 2010). “Growing up no one knew him,” Trump claims. “The whole thing is very strange.” As he has in recent interviews, Trump says he is considering a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. He implies that he can buy his way into victory, saying he is willing to spend $600 million on a primary run. “I have much more than that,” he says. “That’s one of the nice things. Part of the beauty of me is that I’m very rich. So if I need $600 million, I can put up $600 million myself. That’s a huge advantage over the other candidates.” Asked if his talk of a candidacy is anything more than a publicity stunt, he replies, “I have never been so serious as I am now.” [Politico, 3/17/2011]

Fox News host Greta Van Susteren, discussing recent allegations by billionaire Donald Trump that President Obama is not a legitimate US citizen (see February 10, 2011 and March 17, 2011), tells her viewers: “Is Donald Trump a birther? Donald Trump is putting President Obama on the spot, telling him, ‘Show the birth certificate.’” Van Susteren then informs her viewers of a Trump interview on the ABC morning talk show The View where he alleged that “there’s something on that birth certificate that he doesn’t” want made public, and says: “But why is Trump doing that? Well, he tells the ladies on The View there are too many missing pieces.” [Media Matters, 3/24/2011; Media Matters, 3/28/2011]

Conservative radio host Sean Hannity interviews Joseph Farah, the editor and primary writer for conservative news blog WorldNetDaily (WND). WND has been at the forefront of the “birther” movement against President Obama (see December 5, 2008, May 28, 2009, August 1-4, 2009, and January 18, 2011). Hannity says that it is unfair for “birthers” such as Farah to have “been beaten up so badly in the press” for pursuing the issue, and goes on to add that birthers have been “crucified and beaten up and smeared and besmirched.” Farah blames Obama and his administration for the controversy, and praises billionaire Donald Trump (see (see February 10, 2011, March 23, 2011, and March 23, 2011) for bringing the controversy to the forefront once again. He tells Hannity, “I think it’s very appropriate for Americans to begin to question if there’s a reason that Obama will not produce this simple document that, you know, we all have to produce at various points in our lives, and when the governor of Hawaii, who claims to be a lifelong friend of Obama, cannot find this document, cannot produce it, it’s natural that this becomes an increasingly big issue, an issue that I think touches on both national security.” Obama has indeed produced an authenticated copy of his birth certificate (see June 13, 2008). Farah’s reference to Governor Neil Abercrombie’s inability to “find” the original birth certificate, first proposed on WND, has since been debunked as groundless (see January 18, 2011). Farah promises that WND researcher Jerome Corsi (see August 1, 2008 and After, August 15, 2008, October 8, 2008, October 9, 2008, and January 18, 2011) will have “startling” research on the matter coming soon. [Media Matters, 3/24/2011; Media Matters, 3/28/2011] Hannity revisits the subject later this evening on his Fox News broadcast. After telling viewers that the controversy exists in part because of Obama’s fond memories of spending some of his childhood in Indonesia, Hannity tells the White House to just “show the birth certificate.… Why won’t they release the birth certificate?… Why don’t they just release it and get it over with?” [Media Matters, 3/24/2011; Media Matters, 3/28/2011] Hannity has brought the subject up in previous broadcasts (see March 23, 2011).

Appearing as a guest on the Fox News morning talk show Fox and Friends, billionaire Donald Trump continues to raise questions about President Obama’s citizenship. The show hosts reference a recent interview by Trump on the ABC morning talk show The View, in which Trump alleged that “there’s something on that birth certificate that he doesn’t” want made public. After showing a clip from the interview, the hosts interview Trump about his appearance on The View. He denies View co-host Whoopi Goldberg’s statement that the continuing questions about Obama’s citizenship hinge on questions about his race, states that “anyone can get” their official birth certificate merely for the asking (see June 13, 2008 and July 1, 2009), and concludes: “I didn’t think this was such a big deal, but it’s turning out to be a very big deal.… If you weren’t born in this country, you cannot be president” (see March 2-4, 2011). Trump refuses to answer a direct question as to whether Obama was born in the United States, makes a number of unproven claims about doctors and nurses at the Honolulu hospital not remembering Obama’s birth, claims that Obama family members do not know what hospital he was born at, and casts aspersions on the birth announcements published in the Honolulu newspapers in the days after his birth (see July 2008). He repeats the claim that Obama has spent “millions of dollars” defending himself from “birther” claims, a claim that will soon be debunked (see April 7-10, 2011). He even says that Hawaiian Governor Neil Abercrombie (D-HI) “should be investigated” for claiming that he remembers Obama’s birth (see December 24, 2010). Obama “could have been born outside of this country,” Trump states. [Media Matters, 3/28/2011; Media Matters, 3/28/2011]

An illustration accompanying a front-page story on the online Fox Nation blog. [Source: Media Matters]Fox Nation, the online blog of Fox News, promotes Donald Trump’s recent claims that President Obama is not a US citizen and may not be a Christian (see February 10, 2011, March 17, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 28, 2011, and March 28-29, 2011). Fox Nation publishes a story with the headline “Trump on Obama: ‘Maybe He’s a Muslim.’” The story excerpts a recent interview of Trump by Fox News talk show host Bill O’Reilly, who said Trump “hammer[ed] the birth certificate” during a recent appearance on the ABC morning talk show The View. O’Reilly says his own investigative staffers determined that two birth announcements placed in Honolulu newspapers the week of Obama’s birth proved to his satisfaction that Obama was indeed born in the US and therefore is a US citizen (see July 2008). “There couldn’t have been a sophisticated—what is he, Baby Jesus?—there was a sophisticated conspiracy to smuggle this baby back into the country? So I just dismissed it. But you made a big deal of it.” Trump explains that those announcements could have been planted by Obama supporters bent on fraud, and even claims, “I have never seen” a birth announcement in a newspaper. “Really?” O’Reilly responds. “They are common.… But why is this important to you?” Trump says that because he doubts Obama is a citizen, Obama’s status as president is doubtful. He goes on to defend “birthers” as “just really quality people that just want the truth,” and lambasts media figures who make “birthers” “afraid to talk about this subject. They are afraid to confront you or anybody about this subject.” He concludes: “People have birth certificates. He doesn’t have a birth certificate (see June 13, 2008). He may have one but there’s something on that, maybe religion, maybe it says he is a Muslim. I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t want that. Or he may not have one. But I will tell you this. If he wasn’t born in this country, it’s one of the great scams of all time.” [Media Matters, 3/30/2011; Fox Nation, 3/30/2011] O’Reilly has been critical of the so-called “birthers” before (see July 29, 2009).

MSNBC news hosts Savannah Guthrie and Chuck Todd conduct a telephone interview with billionaire entrepeneur and television host Donald Trump, who uses the opportunity to state his belief that President Obama “was not born in this country” (see February 10, 2011, March 17, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 28, 2011, and March 28-29, 2011). Guthrie and Todd laugh at Trump’s statement, and Todd calls Trump’s theory “an incredible conspiracy.” However, when Fox Nation, the online blog of Fox News, posts the video of the interview, it headlines the video, “Trump Thumps MSNBC Hosts on Obama’s Birth Certificate.” [Media Matters, 4/1/2011; Fox Nation, 4/1/2011]

Dr. Chiyome Fukino, the former director of Hawaii’s Department of Health who has personally reviewed President Obama’s original birth certificate and pronounced it valid (see October 30, 2008 and July 28, 2009), calls the “birther” controversy “ludicrous.” She again pronounces the certificate valid, and denounces “conspiracy theorists” in the so-called “birther” movement for continuing to spread bogus claims about the issue (see July 20, 2008, August 15, 2008, October 8-10, 2008, October 16, 2008 and After, November 10, 2008, December 3, 2008, August 1-4, 2009, May 7, 2010, Shortly Before June 28, 2010, Around June 28, 2010, March 23, 2011, March 24, 2011, March 27-28, 2011, March 28, 2011, and April 5, 2011). “It’s kind of ludicrous at this point,” she tells an NBC interviewer. Fukino speaks in response to recent attempts by billionaire television host Donald Trump to revive the controversy surrounding Obama’s birth certificate and citizenship (see February 10, 2011, March 17, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 28, 2011, March 28-29, 2011, March 30, 2011, April 1, 2011, April 1, 2011, April 1-8, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 7-10, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 7, 2011, April 10, 2011, and April 21, 2011). Trump has made statements on NBC and CNN saying that “nobody has any information” about Obama’s birth and “if he wasn’t born in this country, he shouldn’t be president of the United States.” Fukino says no matter who releases what, the “birthers” will continue to question Obama’s citizenship. “They’re going to question the ink on which it was written or say it was fabricated. The whole thing is silly.” Fukino again explains the difference between the “long form” birth certificate, the Hawaiian “record of live birth” kept in state government vaults according to state law, and the “short form” certificate which is issued per an individual’s or family request (see July 1, 2009). She has twice inspected the “long form” certificate and found it true and valid, once at the request of former Governor Linda Lingle (R-HI), who in October 2008 asked Fukino if she could make a public statement in response to claims then circulating on the Internet that Obama was actually born in Kenya (see October 30, 2008). Fukino insisted on inspecting the form herself, in the company of the Hawaiian official in charge of state records, found the form valid, and stated such. “It is real, and no amount of saying it is not, is going to change that,” Fukino says. She notes that her then-boss, Lingle, was a supporter of Obama’s challenger, John McCain (R-AZ), and would presumably have to be in on any cover up since Fukino made her public comment at the governor’s office’s request. “Why would a Republican governor—who was stumping for the other guy—hold out on a big secret?” she asks. She notes again that the “short form” “certification of live birth” that was obtained by the Obama campaign in 2007 and has since been publicly released (see June 13, 2008) is the standard document that anybody requesting their birth certificate from the state of Hawaii would receive from the Health Department. The “short form” was given to the Obama campaign at Obama’s request. “What he got, everybody got,” Fukino says. “He put out exactly what everybody gets when they ask for a birth certificate.” Other records, such as vital records in the Health Department’s Office of Health Status Monitoring, show that “Obama II, Barack Hussein” was born on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, further verifying Obama’s citizenship status. And two Honolulu newspapers announced the birth of a baby boy to Obama’s parents on that date (see July 2008). But Trump and others continue to insist that only the original “long form” record will prove Obama’s birth status. Joshua Wisch, a spokesman for the Hawaii attorney general’s office, says that Hawaiian state law precludes the release of “vital records” such as the “long form” birth certificate to anyone, even to the individual whose birth it records. “It’s a Department of Health record and it can’t be released to anybody,” he says, nor can it be photocopied. Obama could visit the Health Department and inspect it, but could not take it or make copies. Obama requested and received the same “short form” birth certificate anyone would get upon making such a request, Wisch says. [MSNBC, 4/11/2011]

An Associated Press report examines the issues surrounding President Obama’s birth certificate in the wake of Obama releasing his “long form” certificate for public scrutiny (see April 27, 2011) and finds racial overtones to the controversy. Writer Rachel Rose Hartman observes that while the controversy surrounding Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s birth status was short-lived and resolved by a single announcement from a set of lawyers (see March 14 - July 24, 2008), the controversy surrounding Obama’s birth status has carried on for nearly three years (see July 20, 2008, August 15, 2008, October 8-10, 2008, October 16, 2008 and After, November 10, 2008, December 3, 2008, August 1-4, 2009, May 7, 2010, Shortly Before June 28, 2010, Around June 28, 2010, March 23, 2011, March 24, 2011, March 27-28, 2011, March 28, 2011, and April 5, 2011). Hartman writes that Obama “has faced a relentless campaign questioning his US citizenship—and thereby the legitimacy of his presidency—that has disregarded the facts” (see June 13, 2008, August 21, 2008, and October 30, 2008). After Obama released his “long form” certificate, “birther” lawyer Orly Taitz quickly announced her disbelief in the form, saying that the listing of Obama’s father as “African” cast doubt on the veracity of the document; she said that in 1961, the term that would have been used was “Negro” (see April 27, 2011). Hartman notes that many “birther” critics believe the movement’s “core tenets—and its stubborn resistance to evidence disproving those beliefs—can be traced to racial hostilities. The fundamental birtherist conviction, these critics say, is that an African-American can’t have legitimately won the presidency—and that his elevation to power therefore has to be the result of an elaborate subterfuge.” History professor Peniel Joseph says: “There is a real deep-seated and vicious racism at work here in terms of trying to de-legitimate the president.… This is more than just a conspiracy. I think this is fundamentally connected to white supremacism in this country.” Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. has called “this birther nonsense” “profoundly racist claptrap” (see April 1, 2011), Michael Tomasky has written in the British newspaper The Guardian that the birther conspiracy “had to be the only explanation for how this black man got to the White House.… And if you think race isn’t what this is about at its core… you are delusional” (see April 27, 2011). The Reverend Jesse Jackson noted yesterday that billionaire Donald Trump’s “birther” campaign is rooted in race, saying: “Any discussion of [Obama’s] birthplace is a code word. It calls upon ancient racial fears.” Trump, he said, “is now tapping into code-word fears that go far beyond a rational discourse” (see April 26, 2011). Trump has recently leveled allegations that Obama was only accepted into Columbia and Harvard Universities because of his race (see April 26, 2011). Hartman notes that while “[b]irthers emphatically deny such criticism… it’s difficult to apprehend the ongoing resistance to proof of Obama’s citizenship without crediting racial fear as a significant factor.” For years, the “birther” movement has insisted that the release of the “long form” certificate would settle the issue, but now that the document has been released, the same “birthers” either refuse to accept its validity or are insisting that Obama release a spate of other documents to prove his identity and citizenship, “a level of scrutiny that neither McCain nor Obama’s 43 predecessors in the Oval Office were expected to face” (see April 27, 2011). Trump and others are calling for Obama to release his college transcripts (see April 26, 2011), have alleged that Obama did not write his own memoirs, and, despite all evidence, continue to insist that he is a “closet Muslim” (see October 1, 2007, December 19, 2007, Before October 27, 2008, January 11, 2008, Around March 19, 2008, and April 18, 2008). Jackson and Peniel both note that never before has a sitting president’s nationality been questioned. A recent study found that racially biased whites are far more likely to view Obama as “less American” than Vice President Joe Biden, a white man. That assessment correlates with a profoundly lower view of Obama’s performance as president (see March 2011). National polls continue to find that almost half of Republican voters do not believe Obama was born in the US, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, who has blamed Obama for the “birther” controversy, says the issue is irrelevant. [Associated Press, 4/27/2011]

Chris Matthews, hosting MSNBC’s Hardball, interviews columnists Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune and Eric Boehlert of the progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters about the conservative reaction to the recent release of President Obama’s “long form” birth certificate (see April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, and April 28, 2011). Matthews focuses on a recent segment from Fox Business Channel featuring host Eric Bolling and his guest, conservative blogger Pamela Geller, where the two insisted that the newly released form is a fraud that has been “Photoshopped” (see April 27, 2011). Matthews calls their conspiracy theory “absolute garbage,” and Boehlert says Bolling “wants to prove he’s got the crazy niche” to replace the outgoing Glenn Beck on Fox News. Boehlert also notes that for weeks, Fox News hosts and guests have demanded that Obama release the “long form” certificate (see March 23, 2011, March 24, 2011, March 28-29, 2011, April 5, 2011, and April 24-25, 2011), “and yesterday he does, and you turn on Fox News: ‘How dare he release his long form birth certificate!‘… This is a game that’s being played, a very dishonest, hateful, and very disturbing game that the right-wing media is playing with American politics.” Matthews then plays a brief clip from a recent MSNBC broadcast where “birther” lawyer Orly Taitz tried, and failed, to raise new questions about Obama’s Social Security number (see April 27, 2011); Boehlert says: “She’s moving the goalposts, obviously. Man, that’s what conspiracists do, I mean, this is the textbook example of what we saw yesterday. As you said, it wasn’t just the hard-core professionals like her. It was the right-wing media, it was AM talk radio, it was a lot of the Internet, and obviously it was Fox News. Nobody apologized, nobody conceded the fact, they just kept spinning and spinning.” Matthews plays a clip of Donald Trump questioning Obama’s acceptance into Columbia University and Harvard Law School (see April 26, 2011). Page says in response: “I’ll tell you how black folks feel about it, it sounds like he’s saying [Obama is] an affirmative action baby (see April 26, 2011, April 26, 2011, April 27, 2011, and April 28, 2011).… You haven’t gotta be a black American just to be proud of the fact that this fellow was able to work his way up and make it through Harvard and make it to the White House, and… Trump is just pouring cold water on that whole thing, and I think now he’s just embarrassing the whole [Republican] Party.” Matthews says the crux of Trump’s argument about Obama’s college acceptance hinges on the fact that Obama is African-American, and says Trump would never use such an argument against a white political opponent. Boehlert says Trump is another cog in the organized effort to delegitimize Obama as a president (see April 27, 2011). [Media Matters, 4/28/2011] Bolling will indeed replace Beck on Fox News, as the co-host of a roundtable discussion show entitled The Five. [Real Clear Politics, 6/30/2011]

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